Chris is a 26-year-old black photographer living in New York City and dating Rose, a white girl who wants to introduce him to her parents. They are planning to go upstate to visit the Armitage family, but Chris is a little anxious about whether he will be accepted by them as a black man. She reassures him that he will and they drive up.
On the way, the couple hits a deer with the car. Chris is rattled by it, and when the police come, they ask to see his identification, seemingly profiling him for being black. Rose rushes to his defense, suggesting to the policeman that he is being racist in asking for Chris's ID, and the officer lets them go.
They arrive at the Armitage residence. Dean and Missy are kind and welcoming to Chris, if a little casually awkward about his race. Missy is a psychiatrist who offers to help Chris quit smoking using hypnotism. Dean is a neurosurgeon, who shows Chris a picture of his father, a runner who was beaten by a black runner in the qualifying rounds for the 1936 Olympics. Chris is particularly unsettled by the two black servants who live on the premises, Georgina and Walter, who seem vacant and creepy to him, but Rose assures him that it's all normal and he's very accepted.
Jeremy, Rose's brother, arrives at the house, and he is a little more aggressive than his family members towards Chris. He challenges Chris to a fight after suggesting that Chris must be stronger than him due to his race. Chris declines and the situation is diffused. That night, Chris cannot sleep and so goes out on the lawn to have a cigarette. Before he can light up, however, Walter, the groundskeeper, comes sprinting towards him, almost knocking him down.
Chris is creeped out and goes inside, where he finds Missy sipping tea in her office. She invites him to sit down, and without his consent, hypnotizes him, getting him to tell her about the death of his mother. She was killed in a hit-and-run, and Chris still feels guilty about not having called the police earlier and potentially saving her life. In her hypnosis, Missy sends Chris to a nightmarish psychic space she calls "The Sunken Place," in which he is cognizant of what is happening to him, but completely physically incapacitated. When he wakes up the next morning, he no longer wants to smoke cigarettes.
That next day is the day of an annual party the Armitages throw to honor Dean's father. A number of uptight middle-aged white people arrive at the house. Among them is a black man, Logan. Chris finds Logan vaguely familiar, but he cannot place him. Chris also meets a gallery owner he recognizes from New York, Jim Hudson, who is blind, but knows about Chris' photographic work. During the party, Chris finds that Georgina unplugged his phone, and when she apologizes for it, she becomes dissociated, crying while wearing a broad smile. It unsettles Chris and makes him feel like there is something wrong.
When he goes back downstairs, he speaks to Logan, and in the middle of his conversation tries to surreptitiously take a picture of Logan. When the flash of the camera accidentally goes off, Logan freaks out, as if bursting out of a daze, grabs Chris and implores him to "get out." Chris is rattled. The Armitages insist that Logan had a burst of epilepsy and the party continues.
Chris goes and talks to Rose, telling her that he is really creeped out and wants to go back to the city. She agrees to go with him and they head back to the house. There, Chris sends his friend, Rod, who is dogsitting for him back in the city, the picture of Logan. Rod calls Chris almost immediately to tell him that Logan is actually a guy named Andre who they once met in the city. Chris is even more creeped out and tells Rose they have to leave immediately.
While Rose is getting the keys to the car, Chris looks in one of her closets, where he finds a shoebox full of pictures of her with various black people, including Georgina and Walter. He runs downstairs, but Missy taps on her teacup with a special rhythm, hypnotizing him and rendering him unconscious. Before he passes out, he realizes that Rose is in on whatever conspiracy is taking place.
When he awakens, Chris is in the Armitages' basement, strapped to a leather armchair. A video plays in which Chris learns that he is going to be receiving a brain transplant. The Armitages have been running an operation in which they transplant white brains into black bodies, and Jim Hudson, the blind art dealer, wants to use Chris' body for sight and artistic talent. As he watches the videos, Chris realizes that Georgina and Walter have been transplanted with the brains of Dean's parents. After scratching the leather chair from anxiety, he finds cotton inside and puts the cotton in his ear, so that he will not be affected by the hypnotic tapping of the teacup that is meant to put him to sleep. When the teacup does appear on the screen, Chris pretends to fall asleep, but when Jeremy, Rose's brother, comes to bring him into the surgery room, Chris bashes him over the head with a ball from the nearby pool table.
In the hall, Dean runs into Chris, who impales him on the antler of a taxidermy deer head. Chris goes upstairs and stabs Missy. As he goes to the door to escape, Jeremy emerges from another room and tackles him. Chris bashes his head in and goes out to get Jeremy's car. On the way out of the driveway, Chris runs over Georgina. Seeing her body in the road, Chris feels a pang of guilt about the death of his own mother and goes to save her, putting her in the passenger seat. As they drive down the road, Georgina wakes up and attacks Chris and he crashes the car, instantly killing her.
Chris gets out of the car and finds Rose in the driveway with a shotgun. When Rose orders Walter to attack Chris, Chris takes a photo of Walter with the flash on. Walter snaps out of his spell for a moment and goes to Rose, asking for the shotgun so he can kill Chris himself. When Rose hands him the shotgun, Walter shoots her in the stomach, before shooting himself. Chris goes to Rose, who is still trying to get the shotgun to kill him. As he starts to strangle her, she tells him she loves him. A police car pulls up. It is Rod, Chris' friend, who has come to save Chris.
